Vendor Details

Bloomfire

www.bloomfire.com/

Founded 2010

United States

About Bloomfire

How valuable is your research if your stakeholders cant find it and take action? Most employees spend upwards of 20% of their time looking for information. The Bloomfire Insights platform reduces that time and allows teams to quickly and securely share research and content to democratize your knowledge and insights. With every piece of content centralized and searchable, teams can access information when they need it, from any device. Transform your insights into action process with Bloomfire.

Pros: Clean, easy to user interface. Enough features to still be powerful and handle lots of information, posts, questions, and media.

Cons: At some point the cost model drastically changed from unlimited to number of users and for our company, the cost was prohibitive from expanding or growing. For other platforms that are not just a standalone knowledge base, but instead include one as a part of their services there is much more value for similar features.

Overall: As one of Bloomfire's early customers we saw a lot of potential with this platform. I was in charge of conducting a report comparing some of the available products to satisfy our need for a customer-facing knowledge base. It had to be relevant, easy to use, and fast. We had a lot of undocumented information that our customers needed with no way to provide it. Some of our most important criteria included having an API and SSO (we were going to have our users log in from our customer portal site), an easy editor, fast and powerful search, user management, reporting, and so on. Bloomfire came out on top. Fast forward a few months into using it and we were well on our way generating content, marketing the tool, and getting comfortable with the platform. I was probably the main contributor to a lot of the content, so the almost daily use of the tool caused me to find areas of improvement. I worked a bit with the Bloomfire development team with a list and I'm happy to say that today, nearly every one of my suggestions have been implemented in some way. This demonstrates the company's willingness and capabilities to adapt to their customer's needs. Their team has always been helpful and communicative and would love to see continual improvements in the future.

Recommendations to other buyers: If we had to choose a knowledge base tool today, we'd have to re-investigate the market since there are so many new tools and improvements to long standing ones. Bloomfire would not necessarily be the clear-cut choice, but we are glad to have worked with them in the previous years.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Hi Paul, Thank you for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful review to your experience with Bloomfire. We are glad that you have enjoyed your overall experience with Bloomfire and would love to help your company continue your success with knowledge sharing and job efficiency. We take all feedback very seriously here at Bloomfire and take all things into consideration. Again, thank you for your feedback and hopefully we will talk with you soon!

A work in progress

Jan 17, 2017

Chris A.

IT Helpdesk Technician

Education Management, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The platforms capacity for moderated knowledge sharing. Search tools work well and there are a number of different ways users can upload content

Overall: I need to preface this: I do not use bloomfire often. My co-workers use it far more, I simply provide support when they have an issue. The cause for the title of this review is this: for what little I use of it I see the company makes an effort to add features that the community asks for and while there are things about bloomfire I am not fond of I recognize that they will work that out in time. Also I do not see the cost breakdown for how much our license costs the company so I am not really qualified to give credit to "Value for Money".

Finding information through bloomfire is quick and efficient. The posting features are simultaneously robust and incomplete. You can make series of posts to group together work on broad swaths of content on a topic, you can add and remove contributors to give accurate credit. Users can ask and answer questions in a moderated environment. All wonderful.

You cannot bulk change contributors (When a member of your staff leaves the company you have to manually edit each of their posts to move the content to new users before deleting the account so information is not lost and even then any answers they have posted will be lost once the account is removed).

When crafting a post all text and formatting will shift significantly when publishing ( goes from single line spacing to double or more line spacing, also all of the margins get a 1 to 2 inch shift depending on the size of your monitor, and formatting options are limited). Copy/pasting content from Word or gDocs generally requires a fair amount of re-formatting the content as the editor will either not retain any formatting or will interpret it in a odd way.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Chris, glad to hear finding information through Bloomfire is quick and efficient. We are releasing an update to our post editor that should resolve your formatting issues. We are also releasing a feature that will allow you to bulk change contributors. We are always looking at ways to enhance Bloomfire and appreciate your feedback!

Good General Product

Jan 24, 2017

Rob B.

VP of Customer Support

Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

3
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

3
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The search tool, and how it brings up all related material to peruse.

Cons: Constant little adjustments in the editing and viewing field confuses daily operations. It loses it intuitiveness and speed and ease of use.

Overall: It is a nice platform. Sometimes it is hard to follow. Update changes are a little too extreme sometimes where it is hard to catch back up to the content you are seeking, especially for those who only enter it periodically. Keep the updates to a minimum, and don't change just for the sake of change to refresh. Keep the controls simple and in the same place. Eliminate the need for a new learning curve every time something changes.

The product is good, and the information is still there, but the searching and viewing gets more and more difficult with too frequent of changes you don't quickly recognize... and I am in it everyday! Maybe offer a classic view, along with your updated views when you feel the need, like Salesforce did. Change for the sake of change is not a positive thing for every day users. The updates are too frequent and clumsy.

Recommendations to other buyers: Better comparable analytics to different periods of time - month to month, quarter to quarter, etc...

Overall a Good Product

Jan 17, 2017

Melissa B.

Senior Marketing Specialist

Research, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

3
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to navigate and clean look

Cons: The search ability and lacking ability to post to different communities from one spot - having to repost the same content across several communities with different categories and tags is cumbersome. I'd like to post from one place with different selections for each community rather than 3 different posts.

Overall: Like most software, there is room for improvement but this definitely gets the job done and features a sleek, clean look that all can easily enjoy and navigate.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Hey Melissa, Thank you for taking the time to review your experience with Bloomfire.. In regards to your feedback, inside our ¿Beta¿ post editor, you can post across different communities and add community specific categories. We¿d love to show you through this process to help alleviate some of the post difficulties that you are coming across. Please contact us at support@bloomfire.com and we¿d be happy to setup some time to speak with you!

We love Bloomfire from a development perspective.

Jan 17, 2017

Ralph V.

Director of Multimedia

Machinery, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Its ease of use for posting and sharing content. Its searchablility of content and the clean way it delivers the results.

Cons: The cost. It is very hard to justify to upper management that does not see the value based on the same values the dev team does. We constantly have to push back against management who wants to move towards a cheaper knowledge base system.

Overall: We support our entire sales staff using Bloomfire with up to date product materials, case studies and great colaboration with our people in the field. We use bloomfire's api to dole out our manuals, technical data, images and more to our iOS and Adroid apps as well as all of our web sites. We put a document in one place (Bloomfire) and then serve it out to all others making BF our system of record!

Recommendations to other buyers: Personally I love it and would continue to use it but as we gain more and more users the price is becoming a serious bone of contention here.

Great Platform, Increases Engagement and Excellent Support

Feb 01, 2017

Alyse E.

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Very simple and easy to use, low learning curve. Support is great and very responsive. Platform integrates easily with other platforms for whitelabling purposes.

Cons: User interface can be improved in certain cases. Users are often confused as to what groups they are posting to.

Overall: We use Bloomfire as an integrated component of another system. We have seen a great level of engagement and use. Integration went smoothly, including single sign on. We're using a host of groups, some of them private and it's worked out really well. Bloomfire has even fast tracked some of our more important feature requests. There are still a few kinks to be worked out with the UX and users get confused in certain cases but overall it is simple to use and one of the best platforms we've seen when exploring the landscape of available products. Would recommend.

Recommendations to other buyers: Definitely recommend.

Double thumbs up!

Jan 24, 2017

Luis V.

Manager, Client Results

Outsourcing/Offshoring, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The functionality and how easy it is to use on a daily basis. We are able to customize the product to fit each client's need so it can be as robust or minimalist as we need to fit their needs.

Cons: When in the administrator mode, we sometimes have trouble when doing multiple uploads and/or edits of contents. Site may freeze and causes re-work.

Overall: My company uses this software across all of our key clients and we have seen excellent results. Being in a virtual environment, we strive to provide a great sense of community to the businesses that need help in understanding policies or procedures or those that need extra guidance on specific topics. We are able to create this environment using Bloomfire, thanks to the great features & functionality. We upload videos, have different series that can be quickly accessed by looking for certain tag lines and are able to use the space to recognize individuals who are excelling in their client project! We love this product and our clients do too.

Recommendations to other buyers: Nothing further at this moment.

Good knowledge base tool

Jan 17, 2017

david y.

business analyst

Hospital & Health Care, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

3
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use for end users searching for documents and for "Authors" to upload their documents.

Cons: A bit of version control on the published documents would be nice.

Overall: We found implementation very straightforward. We converted a trial account into a live account after about a month of experimentation. After publishing some internal standards for publishing we then started uploading documents from directory drives which made them searchable and much easier for our non-technical staff to locate.

Recommendations to other buyers: Have an implementation plan ready to go, this would be easy to start up and under-utilize. You need to retire your other sources for docs, etc.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

David, great to hear you found the implementation easy and straightforward. We recently released a versioning feature, feel free to connect with us at support@bloomfire.com and we'd love to show you.

Bloomfire in the contact center

Jan 17, 2017

David T.

Customer Engagement Manager

Apparel & Fashion, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Social components. Ease of publishing and editing.

Cons: Would love better internal SEO analytics.

Overall: We use Bloomfire as an internal knowledge base for our customer support team. It's extremely effective in documenting best practices and updates. The social components make it easy for our team to create their own content and have it reviewed by leadership before publishing. It also makes it easy for to share and track readership over time. The comments capabilities allow us to track issues and opportunities over time, as well. We use the analytics as part of our monthly performance evaluation to ensure our team is participating and collaborating in an effort to stay abreast of whatever is changing week over week. As we've scaled up, Bloomfire has helped us maintain the feel of a start-up in how we publish and disseminate updates as a department.

Simple yet powerful tool to organise knowledge and policies

Jan 24, 2017

Piotr B.

Regional Team Leader

Telecommunications, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: Less than 6 months

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

3
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: - ease of use

- tags and categories

- comments

- possibility to save as drafts

- Salesforce integration

Cons: - limited editing options

Overall: Hello, I am a team leader for a support function and added myself so far 66 articles to Bloomfire. What I like about the tool is that we can quickly lookup articles, also I can use tags and categorise to make search more efficient and adequate. What I also like is that I can combine articles in series and can easily add comments and flag articles that require reviewing. Also another positive thing is that when composing an article it is saved as a draft, just like with google docs etc. so you do not have to worry your work will be lost. Another positive thing is that it very easy to embed pages, links, pictures and multimedia. I can quickly compose articles that look nice and are useful. The downside is there aren't many editing options. You can't select font or particular font size. Also when you have tables it's difficult to add them directly into the content, instead you would have to create an excel file and embed it especially when your tables are large or long. Also what I don't like is the enter button creates a new paragraph rather than breaking line, when I want to insert a line break I need to edit the HTML of the content (at least there is HTML editor which sometimes is faster for me to use as I can quicker configure tags and manage the content). Perhaps Bloomfire wanted to limit the way articles are edited to make them look cohesive, still, i'd prefer to have more editing options but overall it's a good tool to efficiently share knowledge and other information in your company.

The best software I've ever used for my position.

Jan 24, 2017

Stephanie B.

Senior Proposal Director

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The search feature - that may seem simple but it helps me find exactly what I need and saves a lot of time when I am working on a tight deadline. I also like that I can invite other authors to review and edit the questions - definitely streamlines business processes.

Cons: There isn't anything I dislike per say; I would like to be able to download selected posts into a spreadsheet, however.

Overall: I know I don't use Bloomfire anywhere near to its full potential, but it is still the best software tool I have found to help me in helping me manage corporate, product, and technical information for my company. I am a proposal director and use Bloomfire as a database to store all of our RFP questions and responses - along with important attachments and informational documents. The search features make it easy for me to find the exact information I need when pursuing a new client opportunity. It also allows my company's subject matter experts to review and update the posts as the product evolves.

Recommendations to other buyers: Not off the top of my head - I really enjoy this software and it's an important tool that helps me succeed in my position.

Excellent knowledge management tool

Jan 17, 2017

Jess H.

Knowledge Management Specialist

Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: Less than 6 months

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I love how simple it is - it's not a be-all, end-all software. It's a KMS, and it's a very very good one.

Cons: So far, the only thing I haven't found easy is bulk uploading for documents, but it sounds like something they're working on. That seems to be the standard: any feature or functionality that users wish they could apply, Bloomfire has considered or is working on it.

Overall: Bloomfire is already shaping up to be an excellent tool for our KMS. We love the built-in screen recorder/webcam record feature. As the admin, setting the system up is super simple - could do almost everything by myself. We love the SSO option, the simplicity of the functionality, and amazing search function.

Personally, the sales process with Bloomfire was very comfortable - I never felt rushed or pressured, and Michael was fast to respond and thoroughly answered all of my questions.

The Bloomfire Community is a great resource - I've been using it as a go-to for quick setup help and best practices advice. It's invaluable!

Overall, I feel like Bloomfire is an excellent choice for a streamlined, purpose-driven tool to help organizations pool their employees' knowledge and expertise.

Recommendations to other buyers: This isn't for the social intranet folks - Bloomfire is very simple and very streamlined and highly specific in what it can help your organization do. If you need to create a space to share, highlight, talk about, and improve your documents, processes, and business practices, Bloomfire is an excellent tool.

Serves our needs

Jan 17, 2017

Josh R.

IT Manager / CSR

Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It allows our clients to collaborate with one another as well as our staff.

Cons: The technology feels a little lacking in how it was executed but not enough so to not want to use the service.

Overall: We have been using bloomfire for a few years now and find it a great tool to have moderated communication within our client network. Customer support is always eager to help us out and after a few sessions we end up dialing in anything we needed done. There is a lot of power behind this platform and I would recommend seeing if it fits your business style.

Recommendations to other buyers: Just try it, there are a lot of features you can miss if you don't give it the time it deserves.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Josh, we appreciate your business over the years. We enjoy working with everyone over at SMS Masterminds and appreciate you taking the time to write this review.

Beautiful Bloomfire

Feb 01, 2017

Jeff M.

Director, Learning & Performance

Human Resources, 1001-5000 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Great search function, mobile app

Cons: It's not necessarily the software but for us trying to figure out how to best organize our extensive content

Overall: Our organization has been using Bloomfire for 2 years now -- for 2 in Sales and 1 for a community of learning professionals. We've seen such a great impact that we hope to expand it to another 800 users in the service community.

Bloomfire has enabled us to consolidate information into a user-friendly, mobile accessible platform for users to not only get information faster, but to connect with a larger community of peers and to SME's as well.

And being a service organization as well, I can't say enough great things about Bloomfire's desire and execution from a service perspective. They listen and are ALWAYS willing and ready to assist. They are tremendous!

Bloomfire saves my life everyday. It is such a good platform to share knowledge and connect people!

May 10, 2018

Glynnis G.

Field Operations Support Manager

Professional Training & Coaching, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The search feature is really powerful, and continues to get smarter with use. I also really like the categorization feature, it makes finding what you are looking for very easy.

Cons: There is no foreseeable way to download content onto an iPad Pro. Several of our clients are now using the iPad Pro and are struggling to use Bloomfire on their devices.

Overall: This software makes it so easy to find content and more importantly, to direct clients to the content they need. It is also nice to have all collateral exist in one location. I feel like this platform is allowing us to break down the information silos that exist in our company. I highly recommend this product.

Bloomfire

Jan 24, 2017

Derek M.

Manager, Dispute Investigation

Internet, 1001-5000 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It's easy to use, reliable, and Bloomfire offers great customer support in my experience.

Cons: It would be great to have the ability for more collaboration (i.e. multiple people working on edits at once on the same piece).

Overall: While there's a lot I could speak to in terms of the product itself, specifically, I recently had an amazing customer support interaction with Bloomfire. I submitted a question/suggestion about something I was unaware was currently already an available feature in Bloomfire. I submitted my request, and within an hour, I had a phone call and voicemail from Chad, Director of Client Success, with an answer. Because I didn't pick up, he also sent me a follow-up email, which included a screencap video walking me through the process. I was pretty blown away by this level of fast and efficient customer support, which only makes me more of a supporter of the Bloomfire platform. Thank you for being a trusted source for in sharing information and resources!

Good Platform for mixed media content and for organizing data

Feb 01, 2017

Henry C.

VP Marketing

Retail, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use

Flexible support of various media

Quick onboard of tool with team

Cons: Clunky group editing of documents

Overall: We use Bloomfire as our team knowledge base and onboarding tool. We like how easy it is to organize different media (text, links to online articles, uploaded files, audio files, image files, video files, etc) into distinct groups for easy retrieval.

Very easy ramp-up with the team. The interface and tool set are very straightforward.

Would receive a 5-Star review if group editing functions were better structured.

Recommendations to other buyers: Try to think about the organization structure and tagging details when first setting up tool your team. It is so easy for everyone to add data elements (categories, groups, tags) it can become "messy" over time.

Blooming your business

Feb 01, 2017

Jenny H.

Tech Manager

Telecommunications, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: User friendly and you can edit at any time

Cons: When bloomfire goes down you are completely impaired if that the only place you store information on.

Overall: Bloomfire is very use to use and share information across the board with everyone on your team. They offer straight forward layouts and templates for your posts which you can edit at anytime from any device. So everyone can have access to the most recent information.

Recommendations to other buyers: Dont give everyone admin rights as someone can delete a post with out your approval and all your work will be lost.

Director of Playout and Delivery

Jan 17, 2017

Karl M.

Director of Playout and Delivery

Broadcast Media, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of posting, searchability, low admin overhead.

Cons: sometimes it can be hard to remove and modify users, not a massive problem but I had to say something!

Overall: We selected Bloomfire from the many knowledge management systems out there for ease of use, low administration overhead and web-based access. Over the 3 years, we have been using it we have moved from minimal adoption to wholesale adoption by our sales, systems architecture and customer service teams, safe in the knowledge that we made the right choice.

BF is easy to use but too limited in customizations

Feb 01, 2017

Crystal Y.

Product Manager

Financial Services, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

3/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

2
/
5

Features & Functionality

3
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Comments: Pluses

-Easy to use and learn

-Easy to learn customization options

-Appreciate the HTML editing options

Cons

- The width of the BF doc is thinner than needed. It's very web 2012 versus today where you see wider panes. I know that it's easier to read in smaller widths but you can add the option of columns instead. Really helpful would be columns that can have images or text blocks within them.

- The change for the background to be one color. This is the common style with a lot of article based platforms (e.g. medium) but there's something off about the UI. It might be that the orientation leans to the left too much (b/c of the right side column of related content), the right side column is too large and removes focus from the main content, or that the default font is just too large (even on a mac retina pixel display, you don't get to see that much of the article display. it subtly implies more scrolling/long-ness of the article)

-You have bugs within the auto formatting detection. For example, deleting from a non-default text such as a title will change the text size to the styling of the text beforehand. Sometimes you can't get the text to return to a certain styling just from the tools bar. Instead, you have to use the html editor to correct the styling manually.

-Leaving the page (out of focus) and returning will show the cursor at the end of the page (this bug intermittently comes back).

- More formatting options like word would be preferred (specific font sizes, font colors, . For documentation purposes, formatting options allow the ease of use in highlighting or differentiating a lot of content.

- More image formatting options.

- Inserting a file takes up a bunch of space. Would prefer that adding a file is like a link or at the end like an attachment. The actual page real estate a file record takes is excessive. Also, I usually want to associate the file to some sort of text block but instead it's just floating in it's own area between two equidistant text blocks.

- Allow wiki style page of contents at the beginning of a BF page would help on complex articles.

- For the feed page, what about a table form for articles? You have tiles and a list view. I think you could optimize width by removing the filters on the side and moving them to the top or inset as part of the table's columns (when relevant) as filters.

Great way to socialized sales content and news

Dec 08, 2017

Carlos A.

Director Kandy CPaaS/UC Solutions Marketing

Telecommunications, 1001-5000 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The "timeline view" for latest content and news. It allows sales to have a quick refresh of the latest developments in the business.

Cons: The search engine could use some optimization and has no easy tools to build product taxonomies which limits a bit its adoption as a sales enablement tool

Overall: It allowed us to have a searchable content repository of sales collateral and training as well as an announcement board for news and market research.

My daily go-to resource

Jan 17, 2017

Jennifer R.

Project Manager

Telecommunications, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to load documents, pictures, videos or whatever we need to reference.

Cons: Sometimes the posts have trouble saving & we have to retrieve them and post again.

Overall: I use Bloomfire every day. I keep training documents, desk level procedures and the forms our office uses in Bloomfire. It is a very easy software to use, and it fosters collaboration between our different teams.

Recommendations to other buyers: I like the ability to see the most recent posts as well as the bookmarked ones.

Love this software

Jan 24, 2017

Ashley M.

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The organization of being able to group items into series. It's so easy to maneuver and find things, based off the tag and search feature.

Cons: we are trying to franchise another company, and its in the early stages of development. Since we don't have any franchisees yet, the price is too much to invest in this software. So it would be great if smaller packages were available for companies such as this.

Overall: We use this software daily to organize our content, as well as to communicate any new program or product additions/changes to our our franchisees.

Bloomfire fit our needs exactly!

Jan 17, 2017

Paul M.

Director of Integration Services

Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: indexing and organizing lots of information

Cons: navigation seems to be one size fits all. It would be nice to see an web interface for desktop browsers so that things don't have to be so blocky.

Overall: We were looking for an internal and external knowledge base and wanted to be able to write one post but control where it would be seen. Adding rich content, like videos, and pre-written documents was just what we needed. After we had a rich library of content, we were able to make use of series and direct our clients to information by simply including a link in our correspondence. Discoverability was also important so that our clients could find relevant information quickly. Transcribing videos and the ability to search within attached documents is very powerful for those needs.

Recommendations to other buyers: Get as many people posting as much as possible and reward them.

Greatest Collaboration Portal on Earth

Jan 17, 2017

David B.

General Manager of Franchise Development

Construction, 501-1000 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Allowing access over a very large group and locations. The ease of uploading content.

Cons: Front page videos.

Overall: As a fast growing company, a location for training, sharing of ideas, storage for videos - documentation - and etc. is crucial to providing right now access. Love Bloomfire. The ability to upload and create content is sophisticated, seamless, and can learn in 15 seconds.

Plays well with others!

Jan 17, 2017

Anne K.

Metro Systems Integrator (Help Desk)

Retail, 1001-5000 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The search feature

Cons: Getting end users to remember to use it. I think some people still Google fixes we have already documented. They can't find a fix that works on Google so they end up calling for a fix when they already have it.

Overall: Reviewing and requesting additional info on articles is a great way to keep documentation clean, relevant and up-to-date. If something is missing a moderator can push a request for an update/fix to the original author. Tags work great too.

Recommendations to other buyers: Have a plan, decide on who will moderate before beginning and set their access to save time on conference calls and meetings. One head chef in the kitchen. Meetings get murky when one person thinks one level of employee should have certain access when a few other people start chiming in and then arguments begin to fly.

Reduces time it takes to find the information you need!

May 03, 2017

Diana P.

manager shopper insights

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: User interface does not require training - simple and easy to use for any level of user. Also the layout is intuitive and by seeing thumbnails it triggers a memory and a level of confidence that you're opening the correct file. The video transcript is a great feature that is a huge time saver.

Cons: Administration can get a bit hands on, but the client support team steps in a ton for me with support.

Overall: time savings, early adoption, ease of use

A great resource tool

Jan 18, 2017

Danielle L.

Manager, Insurance Customer Service

Insurance, 501-1000 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to create documents, and very intuitive.

Cons: When creating a post there are limitations for font and colour options. More formatting tools within a post would be beneficial.

Overall: I have had a good experience to date with the Bloomfire platform. Information is easy to create, store, and share. It is very user friendly, and Bloomfire provides good support tools.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Danielle, we take pride in working with great customers like yourself! Our roadmap this year includes upgrades to the contribution editor I am sure you will love!

So easy to use!

Jan 17, 2017

Katie G.

Administrative Assistant

Public Relations and Communications, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use, especially the intuitive quick-search tool.

Cons: It is proving slightly less intuitive to a select few older members of our staff, who were not brought up on smart search.

Overall: I am not commenting on customer support or value for money specifically, because I do not directly handle either. But based on ease of use, functionality, and general interface, this is THE most intuitive, fluid office organization program I have ever used. We have used it to organize and make searchable everything from everyday tools used by all staff, to institutional knowledge, to easy-to-find links to our frequently used websites. This will make onboarding new employees at least 75% easier. Thank you!

We love using Bloomfire for our internal Knowledge base.

Jan 17, 2017

Morgan H.

VP, Client Enablement

Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to use and implement.

Cons: Time consuming to add multiple files at one time to a post.

Overall: We implemented Bloomfire around a year ago to have a central location for our team's knowledge. We are technical consultants and although we were used to sharing information, there was no historic log of issues or problems that we were solving that could be leveraged in the future. With bloomfire, all discussions and questions are available for future use which has greatly benefited our team. We also enjoy uploading crafted content that the team uses on a daily basis. We love bloomfire! The gamification has also improved the usage and adoption of the product.

Recommendations to other buyers: It is great to use and has helped our organization immensely.

Excellent Tool for Knowledge Sharing

Jan 24, 2017

Sean R.

Director -- Technology

Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use. Multi-faceted use. Good customer support.

Overall: Our organization has used Bloomfire for a number of years. At first we used it as our internal company portal -- all things LIVESTRONG including HR docs, IT policies/procedures, etc. It has grown into quite the space where professional and personal recommendations and conversations can occur. And it's easy as pie. As the Director of Technology, I can honestly say that Bloomfire is one of the easiest web apps to get all of our staff up and running on.

We have now expanded our use and have created a separate community for some of our most ardent supporters, who are across the globe. They were using Facebook but transitioned to Bloomfire over a year ago -- and haven't looked back.

Great community experience and very easy to use

May 17, 2016

Paul-David M.

Salesforce & Pardot Administrator

Management Consulting

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4.5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The ability to create posts so varied and to add them to different series made it a lot easier for our company to spread the word to the employees regarding the processes we use. As a Salesforce administrator, it proves great value when you need to communicate a specific set of steps or to ask the users to follow a series of instructions. Rather than having to repeat myself everytime, I can point out to a post that we created and we are all set!

Cons: The content sometimes seems a bit cramped, especially on the homepage. It can, at times, feel like there is too many information there..

Recommendations to other buyers: If you need to communicate efficiently different processes, photos, instructions to your employees, use this community enhancer! It will streamline a lot of communications and you won't feel the need to explain again the same thing to everyone.

Bloomfire is a Corporate Tool that Gets it Done for Us

Feb 01, 2017

Zack L.

Merchant Success Manager

Retail

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The search function

Cons: The text editor

Overall: I am a Shopify Employee that uses Bloomfire, and I find that it is an incredibly well-adapted tool for cataloguing the library of information that we work with. The search tool is immensely powerful, and makes it clear that other search tools on the internet are sorely lacking, in a certain sense.

That may sound pithy, but you guys nailed the search tool. Every search I make takes 1-2 attempts before finding everything I'm after, and there's a search preview, too. It's spot on.

My only complaint is text formatting. The WYSIWIG editor is a little shoddy, and I think it can be improved.

Recommendations to other buyers: Not really, thank you :)

Bloomfire Rocks

Jan 24, 2017

Mark K.

Senior Manager, Medical Information

Alternative Medicine, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Comments: We needed a solution for various teams within the company - sales, customer service, information, marketing - to act as a single repository of information. One location, one-stop shopping. A tool with a robust search feature and platform agnostic. We found that in Bloomfire. While it can be difficult to promote change in individuals we have had good participation with Bloomfire. Very positive feedback from the SalesForce in the field.

High Hopes

Jan 24, 2017

Chris W.

Creative Director

Design, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

2
/
5

Ease of Use

2
/
5

Features & Functionality

3
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Unlimited storage.

Cons: It doesn't work. See my review.

Overall: I had high hopes for this platform. However, it causes more of a headache than it should. The app on my phone no longer works (yes, I've tried updating and turning my phone on and off). The site on my phone browser lags and flashes like it has a bug (yes, I've done the above with the browser as well). The fact that you can't switch a post to a different group without losing all of the comments/answers with it is pretty much useless. Otherwise, I think it has potential if these MAJOR issues would be worked out.

Recommendations to other buyers: Work on the items listed in my review.

Bloomfire Review From An Employee Standpoint

Feb 01, 2017

Owen C.

Sales Executive

Logistics and Supply Chain, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy platform to navigate and love the feature where anyone can post internal questions.

Cons: Could be easier to organize all the different topics

Overall: When I started my job at a logistics company there was tons of new information that was required to learn in order to be successful in my position. Bloomfire has been very helpful in organizing process procedures and training documents to help myself and other new employees. I loved the feature where I could ask a question that would get sent to everyone in the company to look at and answer. Good process to help new employees get up to speed faster without having to ask the same questions over and over again. Only complaint would be a better system to organize all the many articles but that is most likely something my company's administrators could look into.

Great Knowledge Base

Jan 17, 2017

Jessica W.

Senior Product Manager

Education Management, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The ease of creating an article or question, and answering questions

Cons: It could be our naming and company use cases, but the search is sometimes a little difficult. I also feel like some of the new functionality seems more like feature bloat than stuff we really need.

Overall: My Startup size company uses Bloomfire and I absolutely love it. It has a great user experience and the UI is better looking than other knowledge bases I've seen, which look more like a file directory tree. I love being able to record videos within Bloomfire, drop in files or images, and add sections.

How Bloomfire is changing my business

Jan 24, 2017

Ron K.

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Comments: We are currently migrating traditional static training curriculum to Bloomfire platform.

This has allowed us ( made us ) to "rethink" services being delivered.

Value proposition has not been proven - we have not "launched" this new service and are struggling with the pricing model. Second quarter 2017 is planned pilot with a suburban police department and urban police recruit training class - rollout third quarter in suburban police deparment

The Bloomfire platform's ease of use makes the transition from theory to reality. The learning curve of the features/technologies was/is challenging for our team, unfamiliarity with current technology is still a hurdle . After a couple months we feel that the surface was scratched and it is doing more than our imagination.

Many of clients still require paper ( Office suite format ) as a deliverable.

Love bloomfire!

Jan 17, 2017

Courtnee E.

Business manager

51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to use

Overall: Super easy to use and love how great it is for work use! Easy way to communicate with other co-workers that are in different offices and stay up to date on everything

A non-profit I work with uses Bloomfire as a communications tool for its volunteer program.

Feb 14, 2018

Paul H.

Consultant

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

3
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

3
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Pretty simple to post discussions and questions. Good way to track discussions -- a huge upgrade from using Facebook or LinkedIn groups to manage communications.

Cons: Search function is sometimes a bit clunky but not severely so. Perhaps it's just tht way this instance is configured (and a choice by non-profit), but unable to just send a message to one user -- all Posts are available to entire group. It would be nice to be able to just message a person with a question, or about meeting up with them via a call or visit. Again, perhaps that functionality is available but just not being used by this particular group.

Great platform that evoles

Jan 17, 2017

Lindsay G.

Marketing Manager

Real Estate, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It can be used as information sharing as well as incorporate social aspects.

Cons: Slightly behind on posting abilities. Would like to add photos to comments, tag people in posts, etc.

Overall: Our company started using Bloomfire to connect our office locations throughout the country. What I like is that the platform keeps evolving as users request updated and new features.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Hey Lindsay, Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review of your experience with Bloomfire. We take all reviews very seriously and will take all things in to consideration. You can actually @mention people in comments if you'd like to alert them of a specific post. We also have a "share" functionality that allows you to share any post with a member.

Bloomfire best game in town

Jan 17, 2017

Robert B.

Translation consultant

Religious Institutions, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

3
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

2
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Flexibility in posting

Cons: Looks chaotic when you start up

Overall: I do wish there were easier ways to organize the material and search, but it is getting better all the time.

Recommendations to other buyers: Maybe have some standard sort categories, and make it easier to edit (for administrators) the categories and tags.

Vendor Response

by Bloomfire
on January 19, 2017

Thank you for taking the time to write a review and give us feedback Robert. We have some documentation in our customer community around curating your content to optimize search that you might find useful. We're constantly looking at ways to improve Bloomfire so your feedback is important.

Bloomfire 101

Jan 17, 2017

Lydia T.

Business Information Manager

Financial Services, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Comments: Bloomfire is an easy and great way to keep an organization organized. We can organize based on groups, departments, etc.

Great way to get the knowledge

Feb 15, 2019

Melinda W.

Customer Service

Consumer Services, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use for users searching for products and information. Easy for users to upload information.

Cons: Nothing I can think of other than I wish it had more opportunity to download some things

Overall: We use bloom fire as a knowledge base.

Bloomfire has been a great solution for our sales organization.

May 04, 2017

Danica R.

Sales Enablement

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Pros: Bloomfire is very versatile, easy to use, and encourages interaction and collaboration among users.

Cons: Because it's so versatile, Bloomfire is not always best suited to our specific sales or organizational needs.

Great way to share knowledge with your team!

Jan 24, 2017

Mallory H.

Internet, 501-1000 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Well organized, easy to use, great embedding feature for multiple doc types

Cons: Would be great to be able to customize docs a little more (header images, etc.)

Overall: I love Bloomfire for sharing knowledge with and learning from the rest of my team. It's easy-to-use, easy to navigate, and it's organized well. It's great to be able not only put plain-text in a Bloomfire doc, but to also be able to embed files from elsewhere, as well.

Great Knowledgebase Application!

Jan 17, 2017

Cam B.

Tech

Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Application is stored out of our office. Accessing from any Internet access point is great!

Cons: None so far

Overall: We needed a user friendly web application to allow our techs to upload and easily access anywhere. No complaints!

Good tool, but needs a structure

Feb 01, 2017

Anthony A.

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Layout and functionality

Cons: Scattered and as chaotic as the people that post there

Overall: I like the page setup, functionality, and layout.

However I don't know what I don't know, so relying on a search function or clicking around for me to find stuff I need doesn't work. I'd like a thematic map, tree structure or some other visual and intuitive way of finding content I might have missed when emailed out.

Recommendations to other buyers: Front page

Great Tool for storing Company info

Feb 01, 2017

Ariel L.

HR Manager

Online Media, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to use and organize information. Really liked using it for onboarding new employees.

Cons: We would sometimes have trouble getting the team to engage and post content to the platform. With content that was posted, if something changed or was no longer pertinent, it wasn't always easy to realize it still lived in Bloomfire and purge/ correct it. We did have a few members of our team that acted as admin but it could still be time consuming.

Overall: Our company is on the smaller side (under 25 employees) and had adopted this tool to house knowledge, onboarding and training info for our current and future employees. While this is a good solution we learned that this would have been better utilized once we are a larger organization and had more information that we needed to store/ share. This is a great tool to organize content and engage your team, we were just premature in what our needs as a company were. We had a good experience with Bloomfire, it was just more than what we needed at the time. I would recommend this for organizations that do have a lot of information that they need housed and want to push out and share this info in real time with their team, this is a great solution.